CHAPTER NINE LIBERTY HEIGHTS
CHAPTER
NINE
Liberty Heights
Cora filed away the last of the day’s paperwork and made a list of what she needed to get done the next morning. She always worked that way. It helped keep her organized, and right now, she needed to be more organized than ever before.
Not having a job meant that she was the one with time to devote to managing Liberty Heights, the name they’d given to the housing development, and once she got to running it, everyone quickly realized she was the perfect choice.
Cora enjoyed handling suppliers and contracts, organizing delivery logistics and work crews.
She pushed her dresses to the back of Patsy’s closet and instead wore dungarees every day, managing the build from a second-hand trailer on site.
It wasn’t just the determination to get the houses built that drove her.
It was also the thrill of being in charge, a position life had taught her she should never hope to have, but one that suited her.
She kept her build cost low by finding out-of-work vets and exchanging labor for land.
Men like Roscoe, who’d work their tail off for a chance at something better, driven by a purpose greater than a paycheck.
The other plots she sold outright for cash to doctors, lawyers, teachers and pastors, who wanted to get out of the cramped ghettos they lived in and buy into the American Dream, but who couldn’t find a neighborhood willing to take them.
Word spread in the community, and people came flocking.
Every night she telephoned her brother to check in, since it was his name on the paperwork, his risk if she failed. He rarely came by, so she was surprised to see his black Pontiac pull up as she gathered her things to leave.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him, when he stepped inside, shoulders twitching, fingers tapping. She read the worry on him, like ink on a page.
‘I came to check on things.’
She gave him a look meant to show him she didn’t believe him, and when he didn’t say anything, she said, ‘I call you every day. You didn’t come all the way out here for that.’
He sat down and his knee bounced with nerves before he quieted it with his hand. ‘Maybe I missed my little sister.’
She pulled up a chair next to him and leaned in close. ‘What’s wrong, Benny?’
He pressed his lips into a line and pushed them left and right before opening his mouth to speak.
‘I had this idea that I could go between this life and my Levittown one, darting in and out like a spring dragonfly, without anyone noticing anything, but it doesn’t work.
’ He didn’t meet her eye. ‘And I’ve lied to good people. ’
‘You had your reasons,’ Cora said, hoping he wasn’t about to tell her he’d betrayed her and lied to them all.
Her brother wouldn’t do that, but this man in front of her made her nervous.
He wasn’t the cocksure Benny she’d always known, one step ahead of everyone else and laughing at anyone who couldn’t keep up.
He dug his toe into the rough wood of the trailer floor. ‘I think it’s time to sell my house.’
‘We don’t need you to do that,’ she said, slow and careful. ‘The build is under budget. And I’ve been selling off the whiskey Lee stashed at Uncle Drew’s for extra cash.’
‘I’m not selling it for Liberty Heights, Cora. I can’t live there any more.’
She held herself still. ‘Did something happen?’
Benny bit his lip and stared at her for long minutes. ‘I saw my neighbor.’
‘The one with the television next door?’ He’d told her about going over to see Joe Louis knock out Billy Conn.
He nodded. ‘I never mentioned about his sister.’
Cora’s eyebrows shot up. If they found out a passing Negro had been involved with a white woman, it’d be a miracle if all they did was arrest him. ‘You didn’t,’ she breathed.
His sad smile near about broke her heart.
‘You would have liked her.’
‘Oh, Benny, if they catch you, they’ll bring the law down on your head.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t be illegal. I’m not the problem. The law is the problem.’
‘Does she know?’
‘I ended it. They think my momma’s sick in a hospital in Chicago.’
‘What?’
‘And now Ed thinks I broke up with his sister because I’m in trouble with a loan shark I borrowed money from for the hospital.’
‘I don’t understand. Do you owe money to a loan shark for something else? Have you been gambling?’
‘There’s no loan shark, Cora. There’s no debt. It’s all just lies because I can’t tell them the truth.’
‘No. You definitely cannot.’
‘They’re good people, really good people, and I’m so sick of the lies.’
‘You took up with a white girl, Benny. You can’t ever tell them the truth, or you’ll find out how quickly good people can turn.’
‘She was different. She was special. She … I wish I could have shown her who I really am.’
‘Who you are isn’t a color. If you let her see how sweet you are, how funny you are, how annoying you are,’ she thumped his shin with her foot and smirked at him, ‘if you were yourself with her, then she knows who you really are. That other part is just skin.’
He laced his hands together and dug at his palm with his thumb. ‘I think I might have made a mistake breaking it off with her. I just keep making mistakes.’
She drew her chair closer until their knees touched. ‘You are a good person, Benny. You’re not supposed to be perfect. And look at what you’ve made possible here.’ She tipped her chin around the trailer, meaning the whole of Liberty Heights. ‘We wouldn’t be here without you.’
‘First I messed up you and Lee, then I mess up me and Gloria. And Roscoe flat out hates me.’
‘That’s not how I see it. You tried to protect me. You broke with a girl who made you happy to keep everyone safe. And Roscoe came back hating everyone and everything because we weren’t there and we weren’t her.’
He snorted in skepticism, but he stopped digging his thumb into his palm.
‘I heard from him by the way,’ she said. ‘He sent divorce papers. He wants to marry her. Says he can do that over there.’
‘Maybe I should have gone with him.’
Cora looked at him trying to gauge if he meant it.
‘Except I couldn’t do that to you and Momma. I couldn’t leave you again.’
‘Hey, stop that,’ she said, her voice firm as granite. ‘I won’t have you thinking like that. You’re a grown man, and Momma and me are grown women. You can’t live your life for us. If you need to go, then you go, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Go where? This is a black-and-white world. There’s no place for being in between.’
She squeezed his shoulder. ‘Roscoe found one. Maybe you will too.’
‘Maybe I will, but it won’t be Levittown. That’s for sure.’
‘Where will you go when you sell your house?’
Benny shrugged. ‘Here.’
She glanced out of the trailer window at the balloon-framed houses in rough planked wood. ‘The first houses won’t be ready for months.’
He tipped his head toward the floor beside him. ‘There’s room for a cot right here.’
‘In my trailer?’
‘Our trailer. On our land. On our building development.’
‘Yes, but my office.’
‘You don’t need it at night.’
She rolled her eyes at him and sighed. ‘Fine. But don’t start leaving your things around here for me to pick up.’
He saluted her. ‘Got it, Captain.’
‘I’m serious. I don’t want to come to work feeling like I’m walking into your bedroom.’
‘You’ve missed sharing a bedroom with me, haven’t you?’
‘Not even for one day,’ she said, but the chuckle running under her words betrayed her.
‘See there.’ He pointed to her grin. ‘I knew you did. You missed my unmade bed.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And my stinky socks.’
‘You better not start leaving your—’
‘And my dirty underwear on the floor.’
‘I swear to God, Benny, if you—’
‘You know, I forgot how much fun it is sharing with you.’
‘We’re not sharing, we’re dividing. You get it at night and I get it during the day. And you leave it like you find it.’
‘Roger that.’ He saluted again, and then, in a smooth, easy motion, he stood and slid on his coat, no sign of the jitters he’d come in with. ‘You know, I really have missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too, Benny. I’m glad you’re back.’
‘Yeah.’ He paused at the door. ‘I guess I am back.’ A somber wistfulness filled his voice, like he was already missing the pieces of his life that couldn’t come with him.